Our oldest cat, Midnight, has a paralyzed and insensate tail (don’t tell me that cats need that tail for counterbalance and to turn themselves upright – Midnight’s been doing cat things for almost 15 years with that dead weight behind her). Sometimes things get caught in it, and she has to be cleaned. She hates this, especially in that region where her tail meets her body. Usually only one of us does this, but this morning, I held her while Pepper Mill cleaned.
After years of such treatment, Midnight rarely outright bites. But she does indulge in some weird behavior I haven’t heard of elsewhere. I’m curious iif anyone else has heard of or experienced this.
as you clean her, she "cleans: you. And the harder you clean her, the harder she cleans you. She licks you with her roughened tongue, hard. She does this weird nibbling thing with her teeth barely separated (my dog used to do it to scratch areas hard to reach with a paw) that seems intended to scrub like a scouring pad. It’s definitely not a “bite”. She did all this so hard that I’ve got a Band-Aid on now.
It’s very clear to me that she wasn’t biting (that would’ve been very easy to do), but vigorously cleaning me, as if she felt that, being vigorously cleaned, she had to put forth the effort herself, even if she was cleaning me and not her. Kind of “sympathetic magic”. She’s done this very often in the past when we’ve cleaned her, both individually and together. On no other occasion do I get such hardc licks and nibbling.
Anybody else’s cat do this?
Maybe it’s a “face-saving” gesture - “someone is cleaning under my tail. Therefore, if I am making the proper cleaning gestures, it is I who am cleaning under my tail and I don’t have to be embarassed because someone else is doing it.”
Out of the four cats we have, Charlie, the largest and only one that could be suitably called “gregarious,” is the only one that does. He’s content to sit there and be stroked if you pet him normally, but if you put more than a token effort into it, such as giving him a goodl ol’ skritch in the fur (especially around the tail) he’ll try and groom you. If your arm is not within reach of his head and you’re skritching his hintquarters with some vigor, he will either A) Lick the nearest thing, or B) Lick air as he moves his head from side to side in an impressive Stevie Wonder impersonation. (Really, I have to get some video of this) If you are petting his side or underbelly while he’s laying on his side, he will grab your arm with both paws and set to giving you a serious grooming. His grooming is fairly consistent though; he generally doesn’t become more enthusiastic the more you groom him.
Our Zippo has a spot on the top of his back, up near his scruff, that is super-sensitive. He likes a good scratch all over, but when I get to that spot, he turns his head and licks my hand and gives really gentle bites. It’s kind of like a kitty G-spot. He loves the back-scratching and rubbing, but done in that spot, it’s as though he were having paroxysms of joy. Who knows? Maybe he’s always itchy there and just can’t reach it with either his mouth or his hind paws to scratch. It never fails, scratch there and I get my hand licked.
Currently, we have one male and two female cats in our house. The male has assumed the position of Chief Groomer. He insists on washing the girls’ faces, and when he’s done with one of them, he lowers his head and closes his eyes, clearly saying “I washed your face, now it’s your turn to wash mine.” The girls don’t wash each other’s faces, just the boy’s face. All three cats will occasionally groom a human, but Achilles will do it the most often.
The Siamese girl, Sapphire, will occasionally stroke my arm or face with a front paw if she wants to be gently petted.
I’ve known cats who reacted to having the base of their tail scritched ::just right:: by licking the air, or in one case by gnawing the nearest object. That particular cat would, when you stopped scritching, GLARE at you for making him behave that way.
I’m guessing there’s just some odd connection between the mouth, and that area of the body.
The only reaction mine gives upon cessation of the tail skritching is to look at me with that hopeful “Why’d ya stop for?” stare. But then Charlie has absolutely no sense of shame.
I suspect the “connection” might be more closely related to something involving the mating process, possibly something remotely akin to stimulating the prostate in a human male. (That’s a total WAG, but considering that cats are pretty much concerned exclusively with hunting/eating, playing, mating and sleeping, it’s probably not too unreasonable to assume that the tail skritch just really feels amazingly good)
Bingo. That’s what I’d always thought/heard it was related to, as well. All of the cats I have had and have now react that way when the base of the tail was/is scratched.
